math books to read for fun?

[zaichiki]

Recently bought a set of 10 Murderous Maths books for ds(10) (thank you forums!).  He loves them and re-reads them constantly. What other books like these would he enjoy?

[Jackie]

The Number Devil pops to mind.

[chocolate-chip chooky]

Murderous Maths of Everything is also super. It's not in the usual set of 10, I believe.

[mumto2]

Life of Fred

[SparklyUnicorn]

Night of the Eerie Equations, Night of the Frightening Fractions, Night of the Paranormal Patterns (these can be found at Royal Fireworks Press)

 

The Manga math books are good (search for Manga math at Amazon).

 

 

Edited October 3, 2016 by SparklyUnicorn

[Kathleen.]

Math and Magic in Wonderland by Lilac Mohr

This is a great book- we're reading it now.  It does have two girls as the main characters, but the adventure and math is so superb I think your son will enjoy it.  If not, you can follow along with the author's math club/circle at her web site Learners in Bloom.

 

:001_smile:

Edited October 3, 2016 by Kathleen.

[katilac]

Number Devil and Phantom Tollbooth.

[quark]

I have a bunch of resources listed in my siggy if that helps.

 

The Martin Gardner books were hits here. DS re-read Murderous Maths over and over. He also really liked The Simpsons and their Mathematical Secrets.

[raptor_dad]

We've really enjoyed Richard Schwartz's books, "You Can Count on Monsters" and "Really Big Numbers". "You Can Count on Monsters" is mostly factoring and primes so skews a little young for you. "Really Big Numbers" is scientific notation, factorials, combinatorics, recursive functions etc. About 2/3 of the way through he starts a sequence that starts with crushing the earth into 10^50 atoms and then observing that the number of tours of the 48 state capitals is 10^61 and then moving on to  the idea of a plex and then recursing that to  show a googol is just a 2-plex-plex and from there it is all down the rabbit hole into self defined recursive notation for functions. It is a book you can return to again and again and get something out of.

 

His style is really weird. Check out his website, http://www.richardevanschwartz.com/ and see if you like his style. I think you could combine "Really Big Numbers" and his currently free preprint on the website of "Gallery of the Infinite" and have a weird cartoon equivalent of parts of Gamow's "One, Two, Three, Infinity", another fabulous cult math book for in a couple of years.

[Julie Smith]

I really wanted to read, "The Number Devil" outloud to my kids a few years ago. It looked so great. But it was mostly a conversation between characters and since I'm not good with character voices - so it didn't work out. 

But I think it would be a great book. :) 

[purpleowl]

We've really enjoyed Richard Schwartz's books, "You Can Count on Monsters" and "Really Big Numbers". "You Can Count on Monsters" is mostly factoring and primes so skews a little young for you. "Really Big Numbers" is scientific notation, factorials, combinatorics, recursive functions etc. About 2/3 of the way through he starts a sequence that starts with crushing the earth into 10^50 atoms and then observing that the number of tours of the 48 state capitals is 10^61 and then moving on to  the idea of a plex and then recursing that to  show a googol is just a 2-plex-plex and from there it is all down the rabbit hole into self defined recursive notation for functions. It is a book you can return to again and again and get something out of.

 

His style is really weird. Check out his website, http://www.richardevanschwartz.com/ and see if you like his style. I think you could combine "Really Big Numbers" and his currently free preprint on the website of "Gallery of the Infinite" and have a weird cartoon equivalent of parts of Gamow's "One, Two, Three, Infinity", another fabulous cult math book for in a couple of years.

 

Oooh, thanks for this! My 4yo loved reading David A. Adler's Millions, Billions, and Trillions and asked for "more books about big numbers," and Schwartz's Really Big Numbers looks like it may be accessible for her. 

 

(OP, I hadn't mentioned Adler's books because I think they'd be a little young for your DS, but maybe they're worth a look? He has a number--heh--of math-related books, but also quite a few biographies, as well as the Cam Jansen mystery books.)

[zaichiki]

 

 

(OP, I hadn't mentioned Adler's books because I think they'd be a little young for your DS, but maybe they're worth a look? He has a number--heh--of math-related books, but also quite a few biographies, as well as the Cam Jansen mystery books.)

I definitely don't want something "too young," but I don't want to overshoot either... He's 10. That's about the right target for Murderous Maths, right? (Well, it is for him, anyway. Loves them. Obsessed.)